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Monthly Archives: June 2014

This is an extreme topic that needs to be discussed because every year we hear about at least one, if not up to a few dozen cases, where a parent who doesn’t normally have their baby in the car as they go to work and needed to be dropped out at a daycare ends up forgetting that child in the backseat as, typically, the temperatures soar. You can imagine what the outcome is. It’s all so sad.

Here is a fantastic thread discussion from Coffee With Julie with some some suggestions for parents tasked with driving with their babies in their car. BTW, if you think this only happens to parents on sweltering hot days, you’re sadly mistaken. It happens all the time – we just don’t hear about it unless the cops and blistering heat is involved, or the child dies.

Read this post, and I ask that you all pass it along to other parents. This is so very important. As a non-mom, I take this seriously enough to talk to all of you about this situation. And if we’re all discussing it enough, we’re bound to find a way to help prevent it from continuing to happen as commutes to work to get more and more distracting, and we try to multitask on the ride in to get a jump on the day’s workload using our smart phones, or as we drift away in a daydream as we drive in autopilot mode and the child is sound asleep. Out of sight, out of mind.

I hate to stat it that way, but I have forgotten valuable stuff in cars and on city buses as I tune the world out, deep in thought, and barely realise I’m about to miss my stop so I jump up and take off, never giving much thought to what I had in my hands, or didn’t, until it was way too late. I once left my full coffee travel mug on the counter at the convenience store beside my old apartment building on the way to work one morning, and hilariously and fortunately, it was sitting exactly where I left it when I ran into the store at 10:30 pm in a panic when that realisation hit me after a long and busy day. The clerk didn’t bother to move it for other customers. He knew I’d come back, but not when. (He was such a kind soul. I really miss not seeing him every day since we moved away.)

I’ve been watching this series starring Neil de Grasse Tyson called Cosmos: Spacetime Odyssey since it started a few months back. There are only ten episodes in the first season, but it’s taken me more than 10 hours to watch them all. I would venture to say it’s take me roughly no less than 15 hours, and probably more like 18-20.

Why, you ask? Well, it’s not because the subject matter is so dense and it’s been 25 years since high school science classes, but because I keep falling asleep.

Why, you ask? Well, it’s not because the subject material is boring, because it’s not, and it’s not because I was tired because I had just did a power walk and I was wired. It’s just that… well, Neil’s voice is so lovely (it really is), it lulls me into a slumber on average of every 20 minutes. And I’m not kidding. I have yet to watch the last seven minutes of the season closer because I feel asleep THREE times.

Let me break it down for you:

Nap #1 – started 12 minutes in; woke up to an episode of Parks & Rec – a show I’ve never watched but it was playing live on the tv which tells me the recorded Cosmos played to the end and the DVR switched to a tv show afterward.

Nap #2 – started 32 minutes into the second watching of Cosmos, and I woke up to the middle of a Big Bang Theory episode, again for the above reason.

Nap #3 – started 51 minutes into the third attempt at staying awake to watch Cosmos to the end. Again, I woke up to another tv show airing on my tv. This time it was an unfunny Just For Laughs show. Oy. I gave up at this point. I turned it all off and vowed to finish it another day.

Sadly this isn’t the first time this has happened to me with this show. The husband has a running joke now where, whenever I fall asleep on the couch, he asks me if I was watching another Cosmos. Har, har.

But, in all seriousness, kids, I think I have found a permanent cure for insomnia if anyone needs it. Tell everyone who can’t fall asleep about this magical man’s voice!! 🙂

PS: I’m imagining Dave’s head exploding and Sanjay giggling at my plight as they read this.

These are the cookies I like when I’m in the throes of PMS every few months of so. It’s an easy cookie to put together in very little time (which is good because I tend to lose my patience when all of this goes down), and the taste is just what I need. Lots of peanut butter, matched by just as much chocolate, and some rolled oats to make me feel better about eating somewhat junky cookies to get me though it all.

This cookie is based off the classic 3-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookie recipes. Enjoy.

Mix all of the above but the chocolate chips well, then gently fold them in at the very end. Using an ice cream scooper, drop balls on parchment paper with 2″ around each one.

Bake the balls for ten minutes before using a potato masher to flatten them down to about 3/4″ thick, wiping the bottom of the masher off as you go, and place them back in to bake for another six minutes.

Let the cookies cool for 15 minutes before you gently move them off the sheets to cool on racks. These are soft cookies, so they will bend, droop and break up if you don’t wait.

Store in a cookie jar for up to 5 days. (Trust me, they won’t last longer than that.)

This is for Olivia, whom I started to tell this story to at work but we got busy and, as always, I forget I even started the story or where I left off, and it never got told or finished. Sorry about that. So, here it is. Because you didn’t seem to believe me.

About a year ago, I stumbled over a pin for chocolate pasta over at Pinterest, and I was immediately struck with curiosity. I HAD to try this at home. It was a strong compulsion. I really, REALLY wanted to make this. And I was so SURE we would fall in love with it. I mean, how could we not?!

I know this looks like I’m making a chocolate cake, but I’m really not. It’s the funniest thing to look at and know I have to convince people this really is a thing, and people do make this, and it starts out looking like a baking project. 🙂 So after making this just like any other yellow egg pasta dough, I let it rest before I start cutting it up into noodles and then eventually boiling it hot salty water. All very straight forward, all very normal so far. And the final product… It was very pretty like this, and it cooked up nicely, but no matter what I paired it with or topped it with, it wasn’t for us. The husband asked me never to make this for him again. Period. End of story. 😀

Obscene: Using 3/4 of a 500g Jalapeno cheese brick to make a pan of 8 small chicken enchiladas for dinner last night. Whoops. My bad, arteries! 😀 (Ermine would have said I was being stingy, though. Ha!)

So… I’ve been around but not blogging for two months. I’m not sure how that happened, because I have been cooking, baking and coffee drinking in all that time. I have also been preoccupied with being trained at one job in a different position, relaxing on my downtime, landscaping the front of the house to add curb appeal, and laying my father-in-law to rest this past week. I gave his eulogy. He was the kind of man whom everyone loved to dearly, no one thought they could get through standing up to speak about him without losing it. I volunteered to do the deed, and I almost got through it all without tears till the last three lines. The tears formed, started to roll, and then the ugly crying started. I was a mess by the time I sat down. His void in our lives will be HUGE.

Today we started the annual Battle Royale Of The Ants in front of the patio door. I can’t recommend a product by Wilson called One Shot Jet Foam more. It’s a fantastic foam that dries up after 20 minutes and coats the cracks ants enter homes from, and like magic, the ants are never to be seen again! Love this product so much. You will, too.

I’ve also been trying a few new products out around the house, and another one I will give my seal of approval to is the Windex Touch-Up pump dispenser. It’s super handy. Only one hand is needed to push a cloth down on it and get wiping up your spills and messes off of every surface you can touch with a cloth. And it’s refillable. I bought a large jug of Windex disinfectant cleaner, and I have been able to filled it up over and over. I leave it up on the counter near the sink for the most part but it’s small enough I can drag it around the house as I clean bathrooms on both floors. I loved it so much, I bought one for my sister-in-law when she first moved closer to us, and now that she is pregnant, I can easily see her giving her dispenser quite the workout. 🙂 Give it a whirl.

I have been test driving are a set of professional size non-stick, textured baking pans my mother-in-law ordered through some catalog. They perfectly match the long meatloaf pan I picked up last year in silver. I already see this being a collection I will keep growing. The pans themselves came in a box without paperwork or even a company name, so my guess is as good as yours about who makes them, but they are wonderful. They bake up perfect loafs in bigger sizes you can only get when you buy fresh bread from bakeries. And that is what I was after. ‘Mmmm… Fresh bread. (drooling)

And with that, I am off to get a few loaves of bread started so I can bake them up before the husband comes home from work.

TTYL

P.S.: I am a part-time blogger, not a professional one that does these product reviews for money, endorsements or even free swag. I pimp products I buy, test and love only. No one asked me, or has ever asked me, to talk about the items I highlight. This is strictly from one consumer to another.